Multiple Access Protocols for Mobile Communications: GPRS, UMTS and Beyond Alex Brand, Hamid Aghvami Copyright  2002 John Wiley & Sons Ltd ISBNs: 0-471-49877-7 (Hardback); 0-470-84622-4 (Electronic) 3 MULTIPLE ACCESS IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS To examine the problem of multiple access in cellular communications, first the relevant OSI layers need to be identified, which is not necessarily straightforward. A split into basic multiple access schemes such as CDMA, TDMA, and FDMA, associated with the physical layer,andmultiple access protocols, situated at the medium access control layer, is adopted here. After a discussion of basic multiple access schemes, approaches chosen for medium access control in 2G cellular communication systems are briefly reviewed. The main effort will be invested in the identification of medium access control strategies suitable for systems that serve a substantial amount of packet-data users, starting with 2.5G systems such as GPRS, but mainly focussing on 3G and beyond. It was pointed out in the introductory chapter that, in the specific case of CDMA systems, certain types of packet traffic might be best served on dedicated channels. We will briefly reconsider this issue here, but defer a more detailed discussion on this topic to later chapters. Here, the main focus is on multiple access protocols for common or shared channels. A case is made for reservation ALOHA-based protocols. As a representative of this family of protocols, PRMA is considered in more detail, and possible enhancements to PRMA are discussed, leading to the identification of design options available in the wider reservation ALOHA framework. Appropriate design choices are made and an outline is provided of the extent to which they will be investigated in subsequent chapters. 3.1 Multiple Access and the OSI Layers A company wishing to operate a licensed cellular communications system will normally have to obtain from a national regulator (through a beauty contest or an auction, for instance) a certain amount of frequency spectrum in which it can operate its system. This spectrum constitutes the global communications resource for that system. Consider a conventional cellular communications system, where communication over the air interface takes place between base stations and mobile handsets 1 . Each base 1 In UMTS, there is the option for suitably enhanced mobile handsets to act as a relay for calls of other handsets, in which case communication over the air also takes place between handsets (this is referred to as Opportunity Driven Multiple Access (ODMA) [90]). 50 3 MULTIPLE ACCESS IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS station will usually manage a part of this global resource (possibly dynamically together with other base stations) and assign individual resource units to multiple ongoing calls according to the availability of resources and current requirements of these calls. To be able to do so, means must be provided to split the resources assigned to a base station (for instance a part of the total spectrum assigned to an operator) into such small resource units and rules must be established which govern the access of users to them. From these considerations and with reference to the terms used in previous chapters, it appears that the problem of multiple access can readily be split into the sub-problems of: (a) providing a basic multiple access scheme such as frequency-division multiple access (FDMA), time-division multiple access (TDMA) or code-division multiple access (CDMA); and (b) choosing a suitable set of rules, a so-called multiple access protocol on top of that. The basic scheme would be associated with the first and lowest OSI layer, the physical layer, while the multiple access protocol is commonly situated at the lower sub-layer of the second layer, the so called medium access control (MAC) layer (Figure 3.1). However, this split is not necessarily evident and, in fact, often not done in literature. Rom and Sidi, for instance, situate the protocols at the MAC (sub-)layer [102], but their protocol classification includes TDMA and FDMA (see Figure 3.2). In Reference [26], a similar classification is made, which includes also CDMA as a ‘protocol’, but Prasad does not care much about layering and uses ‘multiple access techniques’ and ‘multiple access protocols’ interchangeably. In Reference [103], the terms ‘MAC layer’ and ‘multiple access protocols’ do not even exist, however, the problem of network access is identified by Schwartz. It is pointed out that in the case where a common medium is used for access by users, provision for fair access must be made, either through polling by a centralised controller (controlled access) or through random access (also referred to as contention). Bertsekas and Gallager refer to media where the received signal depends on the trans- mitted signal of two or more nodes (as is the case on a radio channel) as multi-access media and indicate that in such case a MAC sub-layer is required [104], as opposed to point-to-point links, where the signal received at one node depends only on the signal transmitted by a single other node. They do not explicitly introduce the term ‘multiple Layer 3 Layer 2 Layer 1 Network layer (NWL) Data link control sub-layer (DLC) Medium access control sub-layer (MAC) Physical layer (PHY) Figure 3.1 OSI layers relevant for the air interface 3.1 MULTIPLE ACCESS AND THE OSI LAYERS 51 Multiple access protocols Static resolution Static allocation Dynamic allocation Time of arrival Probabilistic ID Probabilistic Reservation Token passing Time- & freq. based Time-based, i.e. TDMA Frequency- based, i.e. FDMA Dynamic resolution Contention Conflict- free Figure 3.2 Multiple access protocol classification according to Rom and Sidi access protocol’. Interestingly, for our purposes, time-division and frequency-division multiplexing are treated in Reference [104] as part of the physical layer of point-to-point links and it is pointed out that on a broadcast channel such as a satellite channel, such multiplexing can be used to provide a collection of virtual point-to-point links. Similarly, Lee identifies five currently known ‘multiple access schemes on physical channels’, on top of FDMA, TDMA and CDMA mentioned previously, adding polarisa- tion-division multiple access (PDMA) and space-division multiple access (SDMA) [66]. These can be associated with the first or physical layer in the OSI reference model. In his terminology, multiple access protocols appear to be ‘multiple access schemes on virtual channels’, and these are treated separately. There are arguments against splitting the multiple access problem into a basic scheme determined by the choice of a physical layer and a protocol on top of that. Firstly, if a rigid division was possible, and basic multiple access schemes and multiple access protocols could each be classified separately, it would essentially be possible to select each of them independently. However, this is clearly not the case, as there are interdependencies, and the boundaries get easily blurred. For instance, in the case of pure ALOHA, the physical layer is a broadband broadcast channel, which per se does not provide any particular means for multiple access. The multiple access capability is entirely provided by the protocol. On the other hand, CDMA can rightly be considered as a hybrid between conflict-free basic multiple access schemes (dedicated codes) and contention protocols 52 3 MULTIPLE ACCESS IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS (common interference budget, resulting in potential ‘collisions’), as does Prasad. Given the above, it would be convenient to consider TDMA and CDMA as much as protocols as for instance slotted ALOHA. With the exception of Prasad, one could argue that those authors previously listed who did not split the multiple access problem were mainly concerned with computer networks, in which the effort to be invested in the physical layer is rather limited (and for which, incidentally, OSI layering was devised). In this case, the physical layer is often simply a virtual bit-pipe, that is, a virtual link for transmitting a sequence of bits. It translates incoming bit-streams into signals appropriate for the transmission medium through use of a modem [104]. It does not normally include means to provide a certain reliability. These means need to be provided by the data link control (DLC) layer, which is responsible for provision of a virtual link for reliable packet transmission, and which is the higher of the two sub-layers of the second OSI layer, as indicated in Figure 3.1. In a mobile communications system, however, the transmission medium is the error prone radio channel, a medium subject to shadowing and fast fading. Designing a MAC layer on top of such an unreliable physical layer would prove rather difficult. Therefore, considerably more effort needs to be invested in the physical layer. In GSM for instance, the physical layer entails means for detection and correction of physical medium transmis- sion errors [105]. This means that the burden of error control, usually attributed to the DLC layer, is now shared between the physical layer, which provides forward error control, and the DLC layer, which provides backward error control. Forward error control implies the addition of redundancy at the transmit-side through forward error correction (FEC) coding in a manner that the receive-side can (at least to a certain extent) correct errors introduced on the radio channel. Backward error control means that when the receiver detects errors that it cannot correct, it requests the transmit side to retransmit the erroneous data. This is also referred to as Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ). What is particularly important here is that the GSM physical layer specifies inherently a TDMA scheme through specification of bursts which need to be transmitted within time-slot boundaries. These bursts include for instance training sequences necessary for equalising channel distortions. Interestingly, in the GSM specification 05.05 [105], which is entitled ‘physical layer on the radio path’, Chapter 5 is on ‘multiple access and time-slot structure’. Correspondingly, and as highlighted in the previous chapter, the major struggle regar- ding the definition of the air-interface technology for UMTS was to agree on a physical layer which provides means for multiple access. Everything else (such as MAC layer issues) was, at least initially, considered to be of secondary importance. Obviously, the choice of a certain set of physical layer technologies imposes constraints on the design of MAC strategies. In the light of these considerations, the approach adopted here assumes that the physical layer has to provide means for the support of multiple users, that is the possibility to split a global resource into small resource units, which can be assigned to individual users. This is termed a basic multiple access scheme. On top of that, a multiple access protocol situated at the MAC sub-layer is required which specifies a set of rules on how these resources can be accessed by and assigned to different users. These rules may be complemented by rules relating to admission control. Furthermore, the rules governing resource allocation are not always associated with the MAC, they may be associated, fully or partially, with a separate resource allocation algorithm. 3.2 BASIC MULTIPLE ACCESS SCHEMES 53 Layer 2 Resource allocation algorithm Radio link control Logical link control Link adaptation algorithm Medium access control Layer 3 Admission control algorithm Radio bearer control Radio resource control Layer 1 Physical Figure 3.3 Layered structure of the UTRA TD/CDMA radio interface Figure 3.3 shows, somewhat simplified, the layered structure used for the specification of the UTRA TD/CDMA proposal in Reference [90]. The layers relevant for the air interface are layers 1, 2, and those parts of layer 3 that are radio-related. Solid boxes represent protocols, while dotted boxes represent algorithms in Figure 3.3. The resource allocation algorithm and the admission control algorithm are associated with layer 2 and layer 3 respectively. Note that resources are in general allocated by layer 2 if requested or authorised by the radio resource control (RRC) entity situated at layer 3; one could therefore argue that the resource allocation algorithm should be part of the RRC. Note further that the DLC is split in this proposal into radio link control (RLC) and logical link control (LLC) in the same manner as in GPRS. In the end, the LLC was found to be redundant for UMTS and did not make it into the relevant specifications (see Section 10.1). 3.2 Basic Multiple Access Schemes Lee identified five basic multiple access schemes, namely FDMA, TDMA, CDMA, PDMA, and SDMA, as already listed above. PDMA is not suitable for multiple access in cellular communication systems due to cross-polarisation effects arising as a result of numerous reflections experienced on the typical signal path in the propagation channel of such systems. Instead, orthogonal polarisations can be exploited to provide polarisation diversity (see for example Reference [106]). A significant amount of research effort has been invested in SDMA (a collection of articles can be found in Reference [107]) and there are endeavours to enable the deployment of this scheme in cellular communication systems. SDMA may impose particular requirements on a medium access scheme, and there are indeed proposals for multiple access protocols which take SDMA explicitly into account [108]. However, one could argue that since SDMA will normally be used on top of other multiple access schemes such as CDMA, TDMA and/or FDMA to increase 54 3 MULTIPLE ACCESS IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS capacity, it is not a ‘full’ multiple access scheme in its own right. SDMA will not be considered in the following, and we will restrict our attention to FDMA, TDMA, and CDMA, which were already introduced in Section 1.1. FDMA is the oldest multiple access scheme for wireless communications and was used exclusively for multiple access in first generation mobile communication systems down to individual resource units or physical channels. Although plain FDMA is not an interesting choice any more for the provision of individual resource units for cost and efficiency reasons (limited frequency diversity, required guard bands), second and third generation systems include an FDMA element. In the relatively narrowband TDMA-based 2G systems with a small number of slots per frame (D-AMPS: 30 kHz carrier, three users per carrier; GSM: 200 kHz carrier, eight full-rate users per carrier) FDMA still fulfils a role in providing multiple access, although not down to individual channels. In 3G systems with wideband carriers, on the other hand, it is predominantly used to assign parts of the total bandwidth available for such systems to individual operators, and to separate the different hierarchical layers of a system belonging to a single operator. TDMA was an obvious choice in the 1980s for digital mobile communications, since it is very suitable for digital systems; it is cheaper than FDMA (no filters are required to separate individual physical channels), and provides somewhat more frequency diversity. It also lends itself very well to operation with slow frequency hopping (SFH), as demon- strated in GSM. This provides additional frequency and interference diversity, which is discussed in detail in Subsection 4.2.3. Furthermore, a TDMA/SFH system can be operated as an interference-limited system (see Subsection 4.6.5), such that it exhibits a soft-capacity feature normally associated with CDMA [79,81]. Spread spectrum techniques were initially used in military applications due to their anti- jamming capability [6], the possibility to transmit at very low energy density to reduce the probability of interception, and the possibility of ranging, tracking, and time-delay measurements [110]. Spread spectrum multiple access,orratherCDMA 2 , did not appear to be suitable for mobile communication systems because of the so-called near–far effect. Recall from Section 1.1 that the shared resource in a CDMA system is the signal power. For the system to work properly, signals from different users must be received at the base station at roughly equal power levels. If no special precautions are taken, then a terminal close to a base station may generate lethal interference to the signals from terminals far away. However, it was eventually possible to overcome this near–far problem through fast power control mechanisms, which regulate the transmit power of individual terminals in a manner that received power levels are balanced at the base station. CDMA has a number of advantages compared to TDMA, such as inherent frequency and interference diversity (which are less inherent to TDMA, but can be provided as well when adding SFH, as discussed above). Furthermore, it exploits multipath diversity through use of RAKE receivers in a somewhat more elegant way than TDMA through equalisers. The key question is, however, whether CDMA can provide increased capacity or, rather, increased spectral efficiency in terms of bits per second per Hertz per cell. In the following, when we refer to capacity, we mean effectively spectral efficiency. The capacity in a CDMA system is interference limited and, therefore, any reduction in interference converts directly and (more or less) linearly into increased capacity [111]. 2 In Reference [109], spread spectrum multiple access (SSMA) is referred to as a broadband version of CDMA, hence not every CDMA system is necessarily a spread spectrum system. Conversely, spectrum spreading does not necessarily imply that a multiple access capability is provided. 3.2 BASIC MULTIPLE ACCESS SCHEMES 55 This is the main reason for claims made in References [6] and [111] that CDMA (specifically the 2G system cdmaOne) offers a four- to six-fold increase in capacity compared to competing digital cellular systems based on TDMA. However, in these references, the CDMA capacity evaluation is based on equally loaded cells (a favourable condition, CDMA systems are known to suffer particularly badly from unequal cell loading, see for example Reference [112]). Furthermore, power control errors, which reduce the capacity, are only to a limited extent accounted for. Finally, in Reference [6], the capacity gain due to voice activity detection is assumed to amount to the inverse of the voice activity factor, namely three-fold. In other words, only average interference levels are accounted for, which results in a too generous capacity assessment, as there is a non- negligible probability that an above average number of users are talking at once [111]. On the other hand, the TDMA capacity assessment in these references is based on very plain blocking-limited systems with a reuse factor of four in Reference [6], and even worse, seven in Reference [111]. As outlined above and discussed in detail in Subsection 4.6.5, an advanced TDMA system such as GSM with a SFH feature allows for interference-limited operation, in which case voice activity detection translates also more or less directly into capacity gains. In Reference [113] it is claimed that interference-limited GSM (with a one site/three sector or 1/3 reuse pattern, see Subsection 2.3.2) offers better coverage efficiency and capacity than CDMA-based PCS, while CDMA outperforms blocking-limited GSM (with a 3/9 reuse pattern). In Reference [114], it is found that in CDMA-based PCS with a rather narrow carrier bandwidth of 1.25 MHz and therefore limited frequency diversity, capacity for slow mobiles is limited by the downlink (since only FEC coding and interleaving counteract multipath fading, while on the uplink, antenna diversity can also be applied). For fast mobiles, on the other hand, capacity is limited by the uplink (as power control is too slow to track the fast power fluctuations perfectly). Due to this imbalance, the system capacity with only one class of mobiles is lower than that of GSM even with a 3/9 reuse-pattern, where this imbalance is not experienced with SFH owing to the better frequency diver- sity. Only with a mixture of fast and slow mobiles can the capacity of CDMA-based PCS match or slightly exceed that of blocking-limited GSM. Note also that the support of hier- archical cellular structures is easier with (narrowband) TDMA systems than with wider band CDMA systems [114,115], due to better frequency granularity (see also Section 2.3 on this topic). Clearly, we did not provide the ultimate answer to whether 2G CDMA systems are spec- trally more efficient than 2G TDMA systems. It is true that interference-limited systems should in general provide higher capacity than blocking-limited systems, due to (wasted) excess CIR experienced in the latter on certain channels, as discussed in Section 4.6. However, apart from the fact that interference-limited operation is not limited to CDMA systems, if non-real-time data users are to be served, this deficiency of blocking-limited systems can be compensated through link adaptation and incremental redundancy. Refer to Sections 4.9 and 4.12 regarding the application of these techniques in GPRS and EGPRS respectively. In essence, therefore, for 2G systems, matters are not as clear-cut as some people might think they are. One way to meet the high and variable bit-rate requirements for ‘true’ 3G systems, which may require the allocation of considerable bandwidths to individual users, is to adopt wideband versions of the existing TDMA or CDMA schemes, which have 56 3 MULTIPLE ACCESS IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS carrier bandwidths of a few MHz. Wideband TDMA schemes, however, exhibit several disadvantages. Since the TDMA frame duration should not exceed a few milliseconds due to delay constraints of real-time services, when the carrier bandwidth is large, bursts for low-bit-rate services have to be so short that the relative overhead for training sequences and guard periods becomes excessive [109]. Furthermore, according to Reference [86], achieving the necessary cell ranges would have been difficult with a wideband TDMA system, requiring a narrowband option as a companion solution. Therefore, unlike for 2G systems, wideband CDMA schemes have emerged as the preferred solution for 3G systems, as already discussed in detail in the previous chapter. A plain FDMA scheme would not be suitable to provide low and high bit-rates simulta- neously, since either the bandwidth would have to be kept variable, resulting in complex filter design, or high bit-rates would have to be provided by aggregating numerous frequency slots, requiring multiple transmit-receive units. However, there is one way to allow for a cheap (in terms of implementation complexity and therefore costs) and efficient aggregation of numerous narrowband carriers to provide the resources required for high-bit-rate services: orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). In OFDM, transmission occurs on a large number of narrowband sub-carriers, but instead of multiple transmit-receive units required for conventional FDMA, owing to the application of inverse discrete Fourier transform operations at the transmitter and discrete Fourier transform operations at the receiver, the use of a single such unit will do [116]. Interestingly, these sub-carriers can overlap partially without losing mutual orthogonality, thereby ensuring high spectral efficiency. OFDM alone is essentially only a modulation scheme, it does not provide means for multiple access. It must therefore be combined with a suitable multiple-access scheme, such as TDMA (as proposed for UTRA), or CDMA. Owing to TDMA, flexible support for low and medium bit-rate services is provided, while keeping the number of sub- carriers fixed (the filter complexity is therefore comparable to GSM). Only for very high bit-rate services, for which more expensive handsets can be justified, would the number of sub-carriers assigned to a user need to be increased. OFDM-based schemes were seriously considered in Europe and Japan for 3G cellular systems, but the time did not yet appear to be ripe for their use in cellular communications. However, it is very likely that we will encounter OFDM-based systems in the context of 4G, if not in the shape of a new air interface for cellular communication systems (which is possible as well), then in that of WLANs such as HIPERLAN 2 and IEEE 802.11a, which are expected to play an important role in 4G scenarios. Recall also from Section 2.5 that 4G might entail convergence between cellular and digital broadcast technologies. Since OFDM- based schemes were selected for digital audio and video broadcasting, this would add another OFDM-based component to 4G. As outlined above, any CDMA or TDMA system will normally include an FDMA component, and can therefore be considered as a hybrid CDMA/FDMA or TDMA/FDMA system. Furthermore, as discussed in the first chapter, CDMA can also be combined with TDMA, resulting in a hybrid CDMA/TDMA(/FDMA) scheme. In such a scheme, variable bit-rates can be offered with a constant spreading factor by pooling multiple codes in a single time-slot, multiple time-slots in a TDMA frame or any combination thereof. Alternatively, like in wideband CDMA schemes, variable spreading factors can be used. Advantages of this hybrid scheme are, at least in theory, the following. 3.3 MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL IN 2G CELLULAR SYSTEMS 57 • The complexity of joint detection algorithms is reduced due to the reduced number of users multiplexed by means of CDMA. • The introduction of a TDD mode is made easier, since the scheme, unlike pure CDMA, inherently uses discontinuous links. • Soft handovers, which add considerable burden to the infrastructure, are not required. Furthermore, to assist the base station in the handover decision procedure, a mobile terminal can monitor neighbouring cells in time-slots during which it neither transmits nor receives without requiring an additional receiver. With pure CDMA, at least two receiver branches would be required for this [109] 3 . • Frequency diversity provided by the CDMA component can be further increased by slow (i.e. burst-wise) frequency hopping, a well proven feature in TDMA systems such as GSM. This is beneficial when the coherence bandwidth exceeds the carrier bandwidth, which may happen in micro- and picocells [109]. • Finally, the evolution from GSM to 3G would not only be possible from the GSM network infrastructure, but also from the GSM air interface, using the same TDMA slot/frame structure and integer multiples of the GSM carrier bandwidth. In the UTRA TDD mode, which is indeed based on hybrid CDMA/TDMA, due to harmonisation with UTRA FDD, the GSM slot/frame structure was eventually aban- doned. For the same reason (i.e. since the same 5 MHz carrier spacing is used), given the current 3G spectrum situation outlined in Section 2.3, slow frequency hopping is not really possible. Furthermore, as discussed in Subsection 5.1.3, multi-user detection schemes are quite fundamental, if not a necessity in hybrid CDMA/TDMA systems, which increases the receiver complexity considerably. While such schemes would be even more complex in pure wideband CDMA systems, they are not really required. They can be introduced at a later stage to squeeze the most out of the spectrum, possibly after having deployed other less complex capacity enhancing techniques. 3.3 Medium Access Control in 2G Cellular Systems 3.3.1 Why Medium Access Control is Required If we were to consider a system with point-to-point links only, there would be no need for a MAC layer and a multiple access protocol. Although radio channels are by nature broadcast or multi-access channels, it would in theory be possible to provide virtual point- to-point links from the base station to all users and vice versa through time- or frequency- division multiplexing. However, it is not possible in a cellular communications system to provide such point-to-point links to all potential connections, since radio resources are scarce, users move between coverage areas of different cells and normally only a small fraction of users dwelling in a cell will actually want to make a call. In such systems, a multi-access or shared channel and consequently a multiple access protocol are required at least: 3 UTRA FDD overcomes this problem through a so-called slotted mode described in Section 10.2. 58 3 MULTIPLE ACCESS IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS • to allow mobile users to register in the system (e.g. when switching their handset on); • for mobile users to send occasional location update messages. This enables the network to track users and to limit sending pages (i.e. notifications of incoming calls) in cells of the appropriate location area rather than all cells of the network; and • to allow users (or rather terminals) to place a request for resources to make a call. This could be either a user initiated or mobile originated call, or as a response to a page, i.e. a mobile terminated call. Upon reception of such requests, the base station will attempt to reserve the required resources and notify the user of the resources to use and any potential temporal restrictions regarding the use of these resources. By far the most important service in first and ‘plain’ second generation systems is circuit-switched voice. In such systems, resources are split in every cell into a small part of common resources such as broadcast and common control channels, which include the multi-access channel on the uplink, and a much larger part of dedicated resources, that is traffic and dedicated control channels. The multi-access channel is essentially only used for the purposes outlined above, while all other activities (in particular transfer of user data during a call) take place on (virtual) point-to-point links. 3.3.2 Medium Access Control in GSM In GSM, the set of broadcast and common logical channels required, the latter referred to as Common Control CHannel (CCCH), is usually mapped onto one physical channel (one time-slot per TDMA frame). The CCCH consists of the multi-access channel (or RACH for Random Access CHannel) on the uplink, and a number of logical channels on the downlink, including the Access Grant CHannel (AGCH), and the Paging CHannel (PCH). On the AGCH, assignment messages are sent by the base station in response to channel request messages received on the RACH. The PCH is usually the bottleneck in the system, as for every mobile terminated call a page needs to be sent in every cell of the location area in which the intended recipient currently dwells. The resources allocated for the PCH and the other common downlink channels will also determine the resources available for the RACH, since an equal amount of resources needs to be allocated to the uplink and downlink of these common chan- nels. Therefore, abundant resources are normally available on the RACH. Consequently, efficient use of the RACH is not of prime concern and a simple implementation of one of the first random access techniques introduced in literature, the slotted ALOHA or S- ALOHA algorithm proposed in 1972 [117], was an appropriate choice for the multiple access protocol in GSM. With respect to the terminology introduced earlier, one can state that the TDMA-based physical layer in GSM provides a physical channel or time-slot to the RACH (in other words, to the MAC layer), on which S-ALOHA is used as the multiple access protocol. Actually, since the RACH is used to place channel request messages to set up a circuit (either on a dedicated control channel to exchange some signalling messages, or on a traffic channel for a voice or data call), the multiple access protocol used in GSM could be considered as a variant of reservation ALOHA or R-ALOHA, a protocol family which will be discussed in more detail below. [...]... assumption of immediate acknowledgements, which is often made in the context of investigations on PRMA 3.6.2 Description of ‘Pure’ PRMA PRMA was initially designed for the transfer of packetised information pertaining to one of two different information categories, namely periodic and random information Periodic information sources produce individual packets at regular intervals (i.e periodically) during... restrictions when mobile stations are located at opposite cell edges Furthermore, the fast fading and noisy mobile radio channel will make it difficult for a mobile terminal to sense a busy channel quickly, resulting in an increase of the normalised sensing delay α Finally, collision detection is difficult to implement in radio networks because a transmitting node’s own signal would drown out any other signal... silence or idle phases ‘Periodic terminals’ send packets first in contention mode, attempting to obtain a reservation Once successful, they continue sending packets in reservation mode We can therefore distinguish three states for a periodic terminal, IDLE, CONTENTION, and RESERVATION, as illustrated in Figure 3.8 Random information sources do not require resources in a periodic manner and transmit packets... extensions and modifications to PRMA have been proposed in the literature, to enhance the protocol performance or to adapt it to different environments or different services In PRMA, contention packets carry as much user information as normal information packets, thus precious resources are wasted when collisions occur One of the first fundamental modifications to PRMA was therefore to let contending users... collision channel Due for instance to fast fading, or to excessive co-channel interference, the base station may not receive a packet correctly even if it did not collide with another packet On the other hand, and more interestingly, due to only partially correlated fading processes and the near–far effect, packets may arrive at the base station with significantly different power levels If several packets... transmitted packets can be captured, if k Pj > γcr Pi , (3.7) i=1,i=j where γcr depends for instance on the error correction coding scheme employed If the distribution of received packet power levels is known, which in turn depends on the propagation condition and the spatial distribution of the mobiles, then γcr can be translated into the probability Ck of capturing one packet in the presence of k simultaneously... REVIEW OF CONTENTION-BASED MULTIPLE ACCESS PROTOCOLS 71 where the first term is the throughput without capture according to Equation (3.2) derived earlier From Equation (3.8), it is immediately evident that the capture phenomenon translates directly into higher throughput without requiring any modifications to the S-ALOHA protocol9 In scenarios typical for a mobile communications system, assuming no or limited... spreading factor and the amount of FEC coding applied Interestingly, while the version of the protocol without slots still performs worse than the slotted version, the maximum achievable throughput degrades by much less than the 50% observed in the case without spreading For instance, in the scenario we considered in Reference [136], with 1024bit packets, perfect power control and no error coding,... representative values for α, take the GSM slot-length of 577 µs as an indication for the possible packet duration, and consider the maximum radius of a cell in GSM, which is normally 35 km [105] With a propagation speed of 3 · 108 m/s and taking into account that the maximum propagation distance between mobiles is twice the cell radius, the worst case α amounts to 0.4, resulting in a maximum throughput... one) 3.4.2 Medium Access Control in CDMA The discussion of different MAC strategies provided in the remainder of this chapter, while intended to be general, will also consider their applicability in a CDMA context, where appropriate However, given the importance of CDMA in 3G systems, and due to the peculiarities of this multiple access scheme, certain aspects pertaining specifically to medium access . can readily be split into the sub-problems of: (a) providing a basic multiple access scheme such as frequency-division multiple access (FDMA), time-division. protocol classification according to Rom and Sidi access protocol’. Interestingly, for our purposes, time-division and frequency-division multiplexing are